Mac Taylor's Becoming A Marine
by Brii Taylor
Summary: Mac Taylor's seventeen and ready to enlist into the United States Marine Corps, against his mother's deepest wishes. He has a choice: Family or Country? AU This is not how this works in real life, people.


"You can't stop me," Mac said fiercely. He looked at his father for support, but his father looked away, refusing to meet his glare. Lost, he looked back to his mother. Usually smiling and soft, with an ever-present twinkle in her eye, his mother now stood completely erect, all five feet four inches of her drawn to the fullest height she could manage. Her face was stony, unyielding, and she was frowning, sternly denying him.

"Mac, I do not want you to enlist, and that is final!" she said firmly, managing to somehow look down at him imperially even though he towered over her.

"I'm seventeen now, Mother," Mac said angrily. "In another month, I'll be eighteen, and after that, you don't have any control over me. I'm going to be a Marine. Get used to it."

At this, his father spoke up. "Mac, don't talk to your mother like that." Mac barely restrained from rolling his eyes. He was appalled at his father's lack of support. He would have expected that he, of all people, would have supported him, and yet instead of coming to his defense , he remained calmly in his bed, neither taking his side or his mother's, simply watching the argument as if it were a mildly interesting gardening program on TV. On one hand, Mac could sympathize—it was not as if they hadn't had this conversation a week ago, and two weeks before that, and a month before that, and the week before that. It was getting to the point that Mac could almost say his mother's arguments back verbatim—but on the other hand, his father was former military himself. Mac had expected, when he came home after talking to the recruiter that had come to his school, for his parents to be happy for him, even proud. Instead, he had seen the fear in his mother's eyes and watched as she closed herself off even to the merest possibility. And his father… his father was dying. He was in so much pain so often now that it was almost impossible to see anything else in his father. His father had said nothing, only nodded and looked at him with a mixture of sadness and pain and only the barest trace of pride.

"Good for you, my son," he'd whispered. He'd taken Mac's hand and squeezed it briefly. And that was the only thing he'd said on the subject. His mother, however, had waited until they were out of his father's earshot before saying her piece.

"Mac," she'd begun, her lips white from pressing them together, "I don't think you want to do that."

"Why?" Mac had asked, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice and failing. His mother's brow had knit together.

"I don't know if the Marines are for you, you know?" Millie had said softly.

"Why not?" he'd asked. Millie had given him a sad half-smile.

"You're my little boy, my Mac Jr.," she'd said softly, subtly changing the subject. "Are you sure you want to go through with this?"

"Yes, Mom," Mac said. "I talked to the recruiters last year, when they came to my school. They said they would pay for college."

"Is that why you want to join?" his mother had questioned him. Mac hesitated a moment before answering.

"Yes," he'd lied carefully. He was careful to not let his face waver, even a little bit, while his mother had searched his face. The truth was, Mac was tired of not fitting in. He was smart, maybe even as smart as some of the nerds in his school, and definitely smarter than the people he hung out with. When he took the ACT his junior year, he had expected to get a 26 or a 27 overall—but instead, he had gotten a 33, with a 34 in both math and science. When the scores had come out, he felt the change. Never one to actually belong, always sticking out a little bit, he suddenly felt as if a spotlight had turned on him, setting him apart from everyone else. It followed him constantly: in class, where he sometimes felt the teachers' eyes on him and called on him even if he hadn't raised his hand; in the hallways, where students would sometimes stop and whisper, their eyes flicking to him; even his parents sometimes would do it, talking about him quietly in the living room of their apartment and his mother jumping away from his father when he entered the room. The spotlight sometimes caught his friends, who appreciated the attention even less than he did, especially when they got in trouble for goofing off, which happened more than ever because the teachers were always watching him now. As time went by, his friends stopped flicking paper footballs at him and shrank back, scuttling into the safety of the darkness like so many bugs. They stopped telling him how and when they were going to sneak into Wrigley field to catch the Cubs game, or where to meet to play baseball or street hockey. He couldn't cut class with them anymore, either; the teachers that trolled the hallways during class all recognized him now. A few had stopped talking to him altogether, and the ones that still bothered to acknowledge him didn't stick around long enough for him to tell them that he could get a pass to the library for any class at all—which meant that he could do anything and go anywhere, as long as he was careful enough. By now, he spent almost every lunch sneaking out of the school onto the roof to do homework—alone. He took advantage of the library passes, too; he'd sneak into the oft-deserted auditorium, but he had nothing to do other than read his school books and do his mountain of physics and calculus homework. He didn't mind the peace and quiet, and he couldn't deny that he was getting better grades, but he didn't like the isolation. He also had to admit, if only to himself, that skipping drama class, even with a pass, wasn't very much fun if you were doing it alone.

His weekend life had dwindled, too. Now that his friends had abandoned him, he had no one to hang out with except the geeks, who—half-admiring and half-agitated, had opened their circle to him, trying to figure out how he had managed to get a higher score on the ACT than most of them. However, after one night of something called Dungeons and Dragons and bad (if somewhat amusing) high-brow jokes about physics, as well as blank stares every time he brought up the Cubs or the Bears or the Hawks (one of them had actually asked him which species of hawk he was referring to, dead serious), he had to admit that as semi-amusing as they were, he just didn't fit in with them.

With no social life and little homework because of the time he spent doing homework, Mac had several hours a day suddenly free. After a few weeks of hanging around his house, morosely playing his bass alone in his room, his mother had told him (screamed at him, really, through his locked door) that he had two options: either tell her what was wrong with him or get out of the house for the rest of the night, because she was tired of seeing him moping and his bass was ruining her concentration.

He'd been planning on going out anyway. He went for a run, at first just once around his block and then around the next block and then just started running, down the streets, out of his neighborhood, past Wrigley field, not even really thinking where he was going, turning whenever he would have to wait for a light, just so he didn't have to stop running. He stopped five times, all at water fountains and only for moments. He probably got lost, not that he noticed. When finally he decided to slow down, his chest ached but didn't burn like it had the first few blocks. His legs felt sore but they didn't feel like lead as they had after the first mile. He kept running until his legs gave out, and he stumbled almost into the street. Rolling out of the way of a cab just in time, he got back to the curb and for the first time looked around at where he was. He had somehow run all the way to Grant Park, and found himself less than a hundred yards from the Buckingham fountain. It was miles from his apartment; he wouldn't have been able to tell it was Grant Park had he not seen the fountain. Shaking and covered in sweat, he had just sat for awhile, until a cop had showed up and threatened to call his parents if he wasn't gone the next time he came around. So when he felt steady enough on his feet, he stood and hailed a cab, riding back to the house where he no longer felt was his.

He wasn't in terrible shape, to be honest. He ran every morning, at first because his dad made him and then because he wanted to, and occasionally went to the workout room after school—when he didn't have homework. He had an okay physique; he was no Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he wasn't like some of his friends—skinny and pale. He had decent coordination, but he wasn't good enough at any sport to actually be on a team. Girls were hard to understand, and the cheerleaders that waved at him while so easily ignoring his obviously infatuated friends scared him, if he was honest with himself. He was awkward around people and he had no confidence. But when he looked at the recruiters, or at Marines he saw on those nights when he would sneak out with his friends, he saw pride, strength, confidence, toughness, ease, control. Stability. Brotherhood. Belonging.

It was something his mother would never understand; that her son, who could be so charming and who seemed to have a decent number of friends, felt separated from them all. He felt like he was standing on the other side of a fence, and he could talk to, hang out with, and even enjoy others, but he could never join them and he could never be close to them. He wanted to escape those confines, find somewhere he could fit, and finally become a part of a brotherhood. It wasn't something he could explain to his mother, exactly; it wasn't even something he himself understood.

"But Mac," his mother had said, a strange look of pain flashing across her face, "You don't have to join the Marines just because you need a way to pay for college. We have money saved up—"

"Use it for Dad," Mac had said immediately. His mother had seen a spark light in his eyes that hadn't been there before. "I know you're running out of money, you're already almost through your savings. Don't you see? You can use the money you were saving for me now. You guys can retire, you don't have to worry about me—"

"No," his mother said suddenly. "No, I won't have it. You're not going to join, Mac. I won't let you."

The spark that had been in his eyes slowly faded. "You won't let me?" he asked slowly. His mother shook her head.

"You are going to go to college, and we are going to pay for it. You don't have to worry about money, Mac, you'll be fine," his mother had said bracingly, patting his shoulder in a manner that was supposed to be reassuring.

"What about you guys?" Mac asked with an air of someone who'd just had the floor pulled out from under them.

"Don't worry about us. You don't have to worry about us, Mac," his mother had said with a tight smile.

"I do," Mac said quietly. "That's why I'm going to do it. I'm enlisting."

His mother had looked at him for a long while after that. Mac had looked right back, meeting her gaze unflinchingly. She'd finally shook her head, her face for the first time beginning to show the stone it became whenever Mac brought it up now. Mac had actually stopped bringing it up, tired of the fight that always ensued. He had begun to go to Physical Training at the recruitment office on weeknights, telling his mother he had study sessions. He had met with a recruiter, taken the ASVAB (the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test), and scored high enough to get into officer's school. All he needed was for his parents to come in and talk with the recruiters so that he could officially enlist. That was what had sparked the argument today.

"So you won't go talk to the recruiter?" he asked his mother angrily. Her lips became a thin line.

"No. No, I won't."

"Dad?" Mac turned to his father now, unable to keep the pleading out of his voice. His father looked back at him.

"No matter what you do, son, I'll be proud of you," he said. "Your mother does not want you enlisting, and I have to say I agree with her—"

"How?" Mac demanded, anger making his heart pound in his ears. "How can you say that? You served! You were in World War II!"

"This is true," his father allowed. "But I do not want my son to enlist as well. There are things I saw in that war…" his eyes began to get that faraway look that they always got on the rare occasions he did mention the war. "No one should volunteer to see them. I…I do not want you to have to see what I saw, to live with what I have to live with."

The lightest feather of emotion tickled the back of Mac's throat before he responded. "I don't need to be protected, Dad. I can do it."

His father closed his eyes as if Mac's words had caused him physical pain, but Mac knew it was the cancer.

"If this is what you want to do, son, well, clearly I can't stop you," he said with a thin veil of humor. "You have my blessing."

Millie rounded on the senior McKenna. "Is that it?"

Mac senior cracked an eye to look at his wife. "Millie, we can't talk him out of it. You're not going to talk him out of it, so why don't you just accept it?"

"No," Millie said stubbornly. "No, I—I won't allow it. I can't. I'm not. Mac, I'm sorry," she said turning to her husband. "He's not going to go through it, not if I have any say in—"

"You don't," Mac Senior and Mac Junior answered in tandem. She looked from one to the other, astonished. Then she took a step back and appeared to steel herself.

"Fine," she said, looking at her son. The light, the anger, the fight had all disappeared from her eyes, leaving them cold and pitiless. "Fine. If you are going to enlist… you can just leave."

"What?" Mac whispered. Behind his mother, Mac Senior was looking at his wife, his eyes wide open now, shock written all over his face.

"If you enlist, you are no longer welcome in my home," his mother said, her voice flat and emotionless. "If you do not, you can stay here, but if you still want to enlist, you can move out. Tonight."

"Millie…" Mac senior said quietly, warningly. But Millie put her hand up to silence him.

"No, Mac. I've had it. I told him, he's not to enlist. We talked about it; he's not going to enlist. Then he tells us that he's been sneaking around behind our backs to go to this _training_? He lied to my face, Mac. To my face. No, he's going to have to live with the consequences. Welcome to the real world, son," she said coldly. "Your actions now have consequences."

Mac looked at the woman who had replaced his mother.

"You're kicking me out?" he asked, his voice sounding far calmer than he felt. She nodded.

"Yes," she said tersely. Mac was silent for a long moment. Then he squared his shoulders.

"Fine," he said just as coldly as the woman who was not his mother. He walked past her into his bedroom and grabbed his duffel bag. Going to his closet, he grabbed shirts at random, stuffing them in hanger and all. He bent down to grab his shoes—running shoes and the shoes he wore every day. From his dresser, he took socks, underwear, and undershirts, as well as a few t-shirts. Then he grabbed several pairs of jeans and threw them in on top of his shirts. He grabbed his running clothes off of the chair at his desk and added them in on top. He grabbed his shaving kit and his toiletries from the bathroom and threw them in on top of the clothes. After that, he grabbed the money he had hidden in a sock in the top of his closet—almost five hundred dollars of raking leaves and shoveling sidewalks, originally meant for a new bass—and shoved it into his bag.

At the last moment, he grabbed his pillow and added it, too. Then he closed the duffel bag with some difficulty and hefted it to his shoulder. He took his bass—still in its case—and his backpack, which was sitting by his bed, and put the backpack on his back and the bass in his right hand. Then he walked into the living room. Ignoring his mother, he looked to his dad.

"Well—" he couldn't find the right words. His father looked up at him with sorrowful eyes.

"Mac," he said, almost pleadingly. "Don't do this."

"I don't have a choice. I am a future Marine, and if she can't accept that—" he jerked his head towards his silent mother "—then apparently I can't live here. So I have to go. Goodbye, Dad." He shifted his bass and offered him his hand. After a long moment, his father slowly took his hand and shook it, then pulled him in for a frail hug. Mac stiffened—his father had not hugged him in a long time. The action felt foreign. But he hugged him back, releasing him after a second.

"Goodbye, son," his father whispered in his ear for only him to hear.

"I'll come back for the rest of my stuff when I have somewhere to put it," he said as he pulled away. "Don't let her throw it away." He took a step towards the door before turning towards his mother. Again unable to find the right words, he nodded stonily and turned his back to his mother. He walked out the door and let the door slam shut behind him, ignoring the sounds of his mother's sobs as he walked away.

XXXXX

About a block from Mac's old home—it was so odd to think of it as his old home now—there was a telephone booth. When Mac reached it, he pulled himself in and set his things down. He realized he was shaking and took a deep breath to steady himself.

_What now?_ He thought. He didn't have anywhere to go. None of his friends were close enough to walk to, and the buses were going to stop soon. He only had one person, he realized, that he could possibly turn to now. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and took out the card.

_Ssgt. Andrew Wilkins, USMC_. The card read in neat bolded lettering. In the corner there was his office number and under that, his home phone number. Mac looked at his watch. It was 10:00 at night. There was no way he'd still be at the office. So he pulled some change out of his pocket and fed it to the pay phone, dialing the number. The recruiter answered on the first call.

"Hello?" he said gruffly. Mac cringed.

"Staff Sergeant Wilkins?" he said into the phone, suddenly uncertain. "It's Mac Taylor."

"What the hell do you want?" Ssgt. Wilkins barked into the phone. "Why are you calling so late? Do you know what time it is?"

"Yes, sir, I do, and I'm sorry. I had no one else to call—Sir, I need your help."

"What is it, son?" the staff sergeant said, a little softer. "Are you okay?"

"I got kicked out," Mac said shortly. "I don't have anywhere else to go, and I don't know what to do."

There was a moment of silence on Wilkins's end. Then Wilkins heaved a sigh.

"Jesus God, what the fuck'd you do now, Taylor?"

"I told my mom I was gonna be a Marine, sir. She said I had two options—give up the Marines or get out. So I got out," Mac said a little proudly. "But now I don't have anywhere to stay, and I can't get a hotel because I'm underage."

"And you need me to bail you out," Wilkins said.

"If you could, sir. I have some money, I can pay you for the hotel room, I just need you to—"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm comin'. Just let me tell my wife, hold on a second."

Mac waited while the recruiter talked to his wife. He seemed to talk to his wife for a long time, and when he got back on the line, Mac had used up almost all of his change.

"Right, Taylor, my wife says she's not gonna let a seventeen year old boy stay in a hotel room alone. She told me to tell you to come to our place, at least for the night. We'll talk more tomorrow. So here's what you're gonna do: get a cab and tell the driver to go to 1405 North Clark Street. I'll be waiting outside for you."

"You don't have to—"

"Yeah, well, I don't want to, my wife does, and what she says is law around here, Taylor. Get your ass over here ASAP. I'll see you in twenty minutes." And he hung up without letting him say a word.

XXXXX

One Year, One Month and Several Hours Later

"Taylor, McKenna Boyd." As Mac stepped across the stage, in his dress blues, he thought about his mother and father, not for the first time. He had heard from his father a few times, but his mother remained silent. The last time he had seen her was when he went to get the rest of his belongings, about two weeks after he left. He had ended up staying with one of the other recruits who had shipped out a few weeks after he had moved in. His mother had had packed his things into boxes and after letting him in, said only "I'll be back in two hours." Mac took that to mean he only had two hours to move out, so he made quick work, moving things into his roommate's truck, stopping only long enough to give his father his new number and to tell him she was still passing all of his classes. He'd graduated his senior year ranked seventy-fifth and with A's in every class. Ssgt. Wilkins and his wife had attended his graduation, and if his parents had shown up, he certainly hadn't seen them.

He knew his parents weren't there now. And he was okay with that. Being a Marine, he told himself, was all about sacrifices. You make sacrifices to keep your country safe, sacrifices to keep your family safe, and sacrifices to keep your brothers in arms alive. He told himself that the sacrifice he made that night—giving up his family—would spare his mother and father from the pain if he didn't make it back alive. He told himself that giving up his family was the right thing to do. He told himself that the letters he had written—letters he hoped never had to be sent—would take care of any bad feelings. He told himself that if he didn't hear anything from his mother by the time he was set to deploy, he would call her, try to talk to her. He hoped for his mother to call him, just once. His father had, to tell him he was too sick to make it to his graduation but that he was proud of him and that he loved him. His father said nothing about his mother, and Mac didn't ask. He had a sudden, insatiable wish to see his mother again, to look into her sparkling eyes and hear her voice. He blinked it away and began to clap as the man who stood behind him crossed the stage.

XXXXX

After the ceremony, he stood among the new Marines, a lone soldier among families. Some of his friends' parents smiled at him, shook his hand; but his parents were nowhere to be found.

"They didn't show up? Well, we're here," a familiar gruff voice said behind him. Mac did a quick about face and found Ssgt. Wilkins behind him. He gave him a smile that looked more sincere than any of the smiles Mac had seen. "Congratulations, Taylor. You did it."

"Yes, sir," he said absently, unable to keep from scanning the crowd for his parents. "I did."

"And without your parents. I know it was difficult. But you did it anyway." He looked uncomfortable, like he didn't know what to say, so he just patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. His wife smiled and shook his hand, and then they walked away.

_The few, the proud, the brave_, Mac thought bitterly. _Well, I'm at least two of those things._

**A/N: **This is for all the brave Men and Women that serve in all of the United States Armed Forces, but mostly, it's a big Ooh-rah for our United States Marines. You get my sincerest respect and my deepest thanks for serving your country at all cost. God Bless and Semper Fi.


End file.
